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I am befuddled as to why our destination URL in SERPs keeps changing

oak furniture was nicely returning

http://www.thefurnituremarket.co.uk/oakfurniture.asp

then I changed something yesterday I did 2 things.

1. published a link to that on facebook as part of a competition.

2. redirected dynamic pages to the static URL for oak furniture..

Now for oak furniture the SERPs in GG UK is returning our home page as the most relevant landing page..

Any Idea why?

I'm leaning to an onpage issue than posting on FB..

Thoughts?

They have just dropped off a cliff somewhere..

They are not indexed with OSE

I kind of get the impression Majestic is just dredging up links and all sorts from its fresh link data.

It's kind of heart breaking to be honest. Oh well another day tomorrow.

I am sure most of you have asked yourself the question I'm asking right now..

Where have all my links gone?

I am starting to get twitchy now. I would estimate we have lost around 60% of our links in the past 3 weeks.

Does anyone have any comeback stories?

Feel like I am back to the start again.

I have made a number of changes on the site not least removing a reciprical link page.. that had over 200 links on it but from reading one of Rand's tweets is it true that linking out could be good again?

Sounds like a reasonable deduction.. we were P7 for this now P13.. thats quite a drop, but to be fair I have left this SERP alone for the last 7 weeks or so and it is competative.

I would like to get peoples thoughts on putting 80% of your anchor text links in just 2 keywords vs a nice spread of branded and longtail keywords.. like I am.

recently fell off the first page for a key SERP.. and the site in P10 has gone nuts on just that two keyword's..

I know we have a good site onpage/ conversion / low bounce rate page views etc.. Pretty sure we get more traffic than them.

Seems that this obvious bloated anchor text profiling has worked for them though..

What do you guys think/know?

This is an interesting article Theo..

I guess what you are saying and they way I am interpreting it is that domain authority and trust are more important. Which I agree with.

However I would still think there is some milage in this.

Does anyone know of a page template or code I might want to base a blog on as part of an eccomerce website?

I am interested in keeping the look (includes) of the website and paying attention to Source Ordered Content helping crawlers index the new great blogs we have to share.

I could just knock up a page with a template from the site but I would like to investigate SOC at this stage as it may benefit us in the long run.

Any ideas?

Over night the url has started indexing correctly again.. /french_fucrniture.asp but we have slipped to P10 for this.. Not sure if this is some kind of panda/farmer impact..

It seems there are a few more in there than the last time I checked.

We have 9 now...

amp%3Bamp%3Bcat= let google decide

amp%3Bamp%3Bamp%3Bcat= let google decide

amp%3Bcat= let google decide

id = dont ignore

cat= dont ignore (is this the one I should switch to 'let google decide'?)

amp%3Bpg = dont ignore

'&pg=' = Ignore

prod = Dont ignore

Does this add any extra information I should look at?

... go on...

I hear what you are saying Dejan,

issues with that are.

1. I built static pages for this page "/french_furniture.asp" and added the usual rel="canonical" tags, I can't do 301's so unfortunately this page is running along side /categories.asp?cat=French+Furniture which is the dynamic category page.

2. We are ranking well for French Furniture SERP's so I am a bit loathed to tinker with this too much.

3. in XML site maps I have set /french_furniture.asp as a higher priority (0.9) than other french furniture pages.

4. in WMT the french category is indexed well with 5 sub links...

The bottom line is that the Current URL sucks so bad I am worried about the bounce rates hurting us, and that is not the page I want people to see.

There are a number of complex parameters in play here... Its a little beyond me at this point in time.

This site runs on .asp and we have been using front page extensions..

The stock answer we have had is we can gain access to the .htaccess files but WHEN you break it it will cost you.

Sadly 301's and nofollows are not an option as our host won't enetertain the idea of tinkering with the .htaccess file, and I can't find a host in the UK who is willing to get involved in this either.

SERP "French Furniture" in google.co.uk

The URL thats started to be returned P7 is

<cite>www.thefurnituremarket.co.uk/  categories.asp?cat=</cite>

The meta description is relevant however our CMS system 'ecommerce templates' has some code in it to return a dynamic meta description dependant on what catergory is being searched.

It seems that the meta description is being populated from our french furniture category but the URL is not dynamic..

This has only started happening this past week.

usually the url http://www.thefurnituremarket.co.uk/french_furniture.asp is returned.

in WMT is is nicely indexing with 5 links... on it's own...

Any ideas?

Good point Lewis.

How do so what code do I use? (£

I don't have much experience with this.

I have added a price to the Meta Description.. as I believe we are selling this product @ the cheapest price in the country..

I agree it could bring forward any change in any case.

What do you think googles attitude is towards promotional Meta descriptions?

Hopefully a good meta tag that gets a click through would be taken into account ahead of a promotional meta description that mentions price.

What do you think?

I guess what I mean is...

I know it is not supposed to influence SERP's but

Logically if a meta description changes radically I would imagine there would be some mechanisim thats is triggered for at least reviewing the SERP's placement for that page.

So the content of the meta description is irrelevant but the fact it may have changed would flag up somewhere in the Algo?

Its just a thought...

I have just had a page start ranking well in key SERP's and I would like to change the meta description and add a price as we are extremely competative in that line.

Could changing the meta description now a page is ranking negatively impact the SERP placing?

Does anyone have any experience with this?

I am in 301 hell... :-S

With FP extensions you need to access the .htaccess file and I can't find a hosting provider who will touch it for me..

Hence the reason for my question.. I have found a way to add rel=canonical to the dynamic pages on the site but this will change how the site is indexed... also there is a way to amend the URL's to drop catergory.asp / product.asp/ productdetail.asp out of the URL and replace it with the actual product names..

Although other people I've asked seem to think google have overcome issues like this and that they will put less importance on URL's in the future.. the perfectionist in me wants to change everything so its all perfect..

What do you think?

Thanks for the reply Damien,

Thing is we are looking seriously @ magento and other CMS. We are on old technology here.. I make all the sitemaps and feeds myself (with excel)..

Still think its worth the hit or would you leave it until we got a news CMS?